glum

• IPA^(key): /ɡlʌm/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌm

Probably from Middle Low German glum (“glum”), related to German dialectal glumm (“gloomy, troubled, turbid”). More at gloomy.

glum (comparative glummer, superlative glummest)

1. Despondent; moody; sullen.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:cheerless, Thesaurus:sullen

   • 1857–1859, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, The Virginians. A Tale of the Last Century, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1858–1859, →OCLC:

     I […] frighten people by my glum face.

   • 1959, Mordecai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz:

     […] and the prospect of three more days of teaching before the weekend break, Mr. MacPherson felt unusually glum.

   • 1982, Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything, page 23:

     A glummer look replaced the already glum look on Arthur Dent's face.

   • 2024 June 28, Mark Walsh, “Consider the wild gray squirrel, Kagan rebukes her colleagues as court overrules Chevron”, in SCOTUSblog:

     U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who had sought to save Chevron during hours of argument in January, looks slightly glum in her seat at the counsel tables.

From Middle English glomen, glommen, glomben, gloumben (“to frown, look sullen”), from *glom (“gloom”). More at gloom. The noun is from Middle English glome, from the verb.^[1]

glum (third-person singular simple present glums, present participle glumming, simple past and past participle glummed)

1. (obsolete) To look sullen; to be of a sour countenance; to be glum.
   • 1509, Stephen Hawes, The Passetyme of Pleasure:

     upon me he gan to loure and glum,
     Enforcing him so for to ryse withall,
     But that I shortly unto hem did cum,
     With his thre hedes he spytte all his venum

glum (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) sullenness
   • c. 1550, John Skelton, Colyn Cloute:

     That they be deaf and dumb,
     And play silence and glum

glum

1. (Internet slang, humorous) deliberate misspelling of glömde (“forgot”); forgor

   Jag glum 💀

   I forgor 💀